


ultralights

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Bodily Fluids, Hand Jobs, Hangover, M/M, Nipple Play, Pining, RPF, Vomiting, gros losers, maxel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-05 21:16:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19048576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: Maxence could get drunk on sunlight. He, like Eliott, loves everything and everyone: raccoons, potted plants, boys, girls, neithers, boths, neon clusterfucks of 1990s graphic design, everything, everyone, everything, all of it. Maxence continues to say so, flinging an arm around Axel and hauling him in close as they stagger down Avenue de Clichy,Seriously, dude, I love you thiiiiis much.*Or: Maxence drinks too much.





	1. can't help the way I drip

**Author's Note:**

> Truly, these Instagram posts will be the death of me. This takes place in a separate universe from [borderline](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18892750), which is, incidentally, probably one of my favorite things I have written thus far in 2019!
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1TVNoMp1oM) is the song stuck in Maxence's (read: my) head.
> 
> Many thanks, as always, to [FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite) for their encouragement, enablement, and edits. Read their Maxel fic [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/pseuds/FLWhite).

Maxence drinks too much. He loses his phone (Axel pockets it after the third beer). He loses his credit card (Axel pries it up from the edge of the sidewalk, fumbling at its edges with his fingernails, and pockets it also). He loses his hat (Axel has no idea where it has gone, and he has no idea how Maxence has managed to make such a garishly patterned cap dematerialize in the three seconds Axel was bent over retrieving his credit card. It is possible that Maxence, like the kung fu hero of a Hong Kong film Axel watched once, is a drunken master, a wizard fueled by wine and bitter craft brews; it is possible also that Maxence removed his hat and frisbeed it into a bush).

“I love you,” the drunken master says as he sways and bounces bare-headed down the sidewalk, “I love you, I love you, you’re my man, you’re  _the_ man.”

He could pass for a Shaolin monk, Axel thinks, with his orange bomber jacket and his shorn head with its short soft fuzz of growth. The streetlights catch on the curve of his skull: a white silken gleam in the summer heat.

“That’s nice,” Axel says. He grips Maxence by the elbow and steers him across the street. “Watch the curb.”

It’s not, Axel reflects, that Maxence doesn’t know his limits. He knows them, and he rushes gleefully toward them, to meet them and surpass them. And his limits are not exactly difficult to reach. Maxence could get drunk on sunlight. He, like Eliott, loves everything and everyone: raccoons, potted plants, boys, girls, neithers, boths, neon clusterfucks of 1990s graphic design, everything, everyone, everything, all of it. Maxence continues to say so, flinging an arm around Axel and hauling him in close as they stagger down Avenue de Clichy,  _Seriously, dude, I love you thiiiiis much._

Axel buys him a kebab.

 

 

They perch themselves against the plaster wall of the doner restaurant, along the uneven cobblestones of the little side street. It was a bistro once: Axel remembers coming here long ago with his mother, when he was so small that all the trees seemed ancient and the cobblestones were larger than his feet in his light-up sneakers, and watching her drink her glass of wine. The cup had glowed like a jewel in the early afternoon sun.

Maxence squats down to eat. His eyes are dreamy; he hums to himself and wipes at his mouth periodically with his knuckles. Across the cobbles, on a boarded-up window, someone has spray-stenciled the mask of Darth Vader in red.

It’s past midnight, and the street is poorly lit and empty; no chance of chance encounters.  _Is that—? Are you—? Can we—?_ And out come the phones, the smiles.

Axel reaches down and rests the palm of his hand on the top of Maxence’s head.

“And you,” he says, “what have you done with your hat?”

“Oh, no,” Maxence says faintly, “shit, my hat. Wait, no. I’m wearing it.”

“That’s my hand,” Axel says.  _Dumbass_ , he was supposed to say. “Maxe,” he says instead, tender. Maxence’s scalp is warm beneath his hand.

“Is it?” Maxence peers up. Axel lifts his hand just a bit and wiggles his fingers at him, and Maxence giggles.

“Shall I guide you home like this?” Axel says. He places his hand back on Maxence’s head like the claw of a toy machine and turns it gently to the left. Maxence cackles, gleeful. “Left,” Axel says, “right, straight ahead, aaand stop!”

“Are you taking me home, Axel?” Maxence says. “That’s great. That’s so nice. You’re so nice. Thank you, Axel.”

“Well, I can’t leave you,” Axel says. He swallows. “I mean, I can’t leave you here."

 

  
At the door of his apartment, Maxence says, tapping his pockets, his ass, “Fuck, where’re my keys, I think I lost my keys.” He’s still nodding along to whatever music is playing in his head. Axel wonders if he really can’t hear the jangle of his keys in the left pocket of his jacket. After a moment, he takes pity on Maxence, or on himself; he reaches over and pulls Maxence’s keys out: one for the front door, one for the mailbox, one for his agency, and one Axel doesn’t know, maybe for a girlfriend’s apartment, maybe for his family home. And the strangely austere keychain: a thick silver ring.

“Ah,” Maxence says, accepting the handful. “Thief. Pickpocket.”

“Go to bed,” Axel says. “Drink some water. Lie down on your side. Hey, is your floor clear?" He squints at the gap between the door and its frame, as though he can peer into the darkness of Maxence's apartment and see the boxes and boxes of gifts, half-opened, tissue paper and shirts and hats and plush toys and jewelry and God knows what else spilling across the planks. “No, of course it isn't. Be careful, okay? Don't break your other foot.” Finally, he looks up. "Okay?"

“You don’t want to come in?” Maxence says then. He smiles at Axel a little slyly. He twirls the ring of keys around his index finger. His face is flushed, and the tips of his ears are turning pink; Axel looks at him and hates him. “Just for a little?”

It’s hard to lean in without broadcasting his intent; Maxence is so much taller than him, after all, and even swaying on his feet with wine souring on his tongue, even then, he can see Axel coming, lifting his face, raising himself onto his toes.

“Mm,” Maxence murmurs.

In the moment before Maxence engulfs him, Axel sees the white flash of teeth.

 

 

Unlike Eliott, Maxence does not seize Axel’s face in his hands: he goes straight for the ass, squeezing tight and tugging Axel against him. His jacket rustles between their bodies, smelling of beer and cologne. His mouth is slippery, boozy, garlicky. Axel sucks Maxence's lower lip between his teeth and bites it. He feels the tug and sudden tautness as Maxence begins to grin.

He grips Maxence by the back of the neck, presses their foreheads together, rubs his thumb over the peach fuzz in the dip at the base of Maxence’s skull. Maxence’s breath puffs damply against his mouth, coming fast. He hears the faint wet noise of Maxence’s lips as they part.

Axel pulls away. “Goodnight,” he says.

Maxence blinks at him, uncomprehending. There’s a sheen across his lips: Axel’s saliva. “What?” he says. He swipes at his mouth. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Sure. Okay. G’night.”

“Seriously, don’t trip on anything.”

Maxence tries a key in the lock—the wrong one. “Forget tripping,” he mutters. “First I gotta...gotta get the fucking door open.”

“Yeah.”

He lingers, hands in his pockets. Maxence gets it right on the third try and turns the key. The door opens, but Maxence doesn’t move.

“You sure you don’t wanna…?”

“Here,” Axel says. He finds Maxence’s credit card, floating amid the coins and the lump of old gum forgotten and fossilized in a foil wrapper, and fishes it out. “You dropped this. Earlier.”

“Oh, shit,” Maxence says. “No way. Thanks, Axel.”

The phone next. He digs it out slowly. He would have given it back the next day, of course. In the afternoon, after Maxence had had enough time to realize and sweat about the loss. He would have looked at it tonight, lying in bed, at two a.m., three a.m., dragging his thumb against the blank black face, tapping at the full moon on the lock screen in time with his own pulse. Watching it light up over and over.

“This, too.”

“Seriously?” Maxence says. “Fuck. I’m fucking wasted. Thanks. I didn’t even notice it was missing.”

“Your hat’s gone for good, though. Sorry.”

“ ’S okay,” Maxence says. He grabs Axel’s hand, drags it to his head, and beams. “This is better.”

 _Ask me again,_ Axel thinks. He pushes his hand down on the crown of Maxence’s head, digs his fingertips in, and looks up.  _Ask me again._ His throat constricts. His stomach lurches.  _Maxence, please._

Maxence inhales. Starts to speak.

 


	2. now I'm lit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You'll notice that the chapter count has increased. _Argh._
> 
> See you in a few days with the third (and final, God damn it) installment.

It’s hard to float backward and kiss at the same time. He isn’t very good at it.

Maybe that’s why Axel is angry. That’s what Maxence thinks. His one clear thought. 

Maxence likes it when Axel is angry, though. He likes it, and that’s why he tipped back that last beer, Belgian, ten percent. And the wine after that, deep red, so dry. Another memory cuts through the billowing clouds in his skull: the glitter of warning in Axel’s eyes across the table.

_Maxe. I don’t know if…_

_Mm, come on, it’s the weekend._

_Weekends don’t mean anything. It’s not like we go to work during the week only. Come on, enough._

_No._

Four beers, Maxence counts to himself, tapping at Axel’s shoulders as he bounces backward, four beers, two cigarettes, a glass and a half of wine, and a bit of whatever Axel was enjoying: white wine, glycerine, limpid, and faintly, faintly green with the merest memory of a grape-skin, and it did look like he was enjoying it, savoring it like a middle-aged woman. _Who taught you to drink, baby, who was it, your mother?_

“What a good boy,” Maxence says now. His foot snags against something on the floor, and he staggers. _Oops. What was—? Where did—?_

“Watch where you’re going, fuck,” Axel says.

“Steer me.”

“Just how—” Axel grabs him, holds him still “—Maxence, fuck, just how drunk are you?”

“My mouth tastes funny,” he complains. “Why? There’s—in my teeth…”

He runs his tongue behind a canine and incisor, sucks at his teeth. A string of meat. Oh, right, the kebab. There was a kebab, too. Hot and juicy; he buried his face in it. Is there sauce on his face? Is that why Axel won’t kiss him again?

“Sauce—what?” Axel says. “Hush, come on, let’s get you to bed. Okay?” 

“Did I say that out loud? About the kebab. Hey, thanks for the kebab, Axel.”

“Maxence, you haven’t shut up since we left the bar.”

“Oh, yeah? Sorry. Honestly. Sorry.”

“You have a third career in narration, after you develop a beer belly. Come. This way.” 

“A beer—no! Axel, no.”

He tugs his hands away from Axel’s and rubs at himself, at his stomach: the beer belly. Bits of doner kebab and wine and beer and fizz all bubbling inside, nice and warm and full, maybe, full, yes, but not _big_. Not _big,_ Axel.

Axel really _is_ angry. Maxence isn’t sure he likes it anymore. He’s sorry about the wine, the half glass of wine. That was too much. That was going too far.

“Hush,” Axel says. “I’m not angry.” 

The floor tips away. His feet are in the air. Axel is taking off his shoes: why? The clouds are in his head and all around him too. Oh, it’s only his bed.

Axel peels off his socks. Maxence wiggles his toes. One, two, three, four…

“On your side,” Axel says, nudging him. “On your side, fuck. Stay here. I’ll get you some water.” 

Water, no. He doesn’t need any water. There’s a lake in his stomach, full of happy little doner fish. He has to piss. He gropes his way to the bathroom, dragging his fingertips along the wall. And now to be very careful, to be very exact: his sister hates it when her boyfriends piss on the floor; she always complains; he can’t let Axel complain about him in the same way… 

Fuck, the longest piss of his life.

“Maxence?”

“Wait for me, wait a moment. Don’t go.” 

Axel says, soft and steady from the void beyond the yellow slice of bathroom light, “I’m not going anywhere.”

A little shake. He pumps the flush handle and frowns down at himself and his naked feet on the tile as the water swirls away. Can he get it up? For Axel?

He sways and swallows and swallows again, and then he leans over the sink and heaves.

 

 

The sun has painted the sky this exact eye-watering shade of blue to injure him. His mouth is the mouth of Death. His skin is clammy, his stomach sour. He turns his head and presses his face into his pillow. 

For a moment, he remembers nothing, and then the night before comes back to him, in patches, in drips: cobblestones, bar lights and street lights shining through glass bottles, through glass goblets, across the rings on his fingers, across Axel’s fingernails and the deep blue of his irises. His hat in a bush. A pile of shaved meat in a pita. White sauce. A key scratching in a lock, Axel’s fists squeezing his jacket, Axel’s hand on his head, on his back, warm, sturdy, rubbing soothing circles. The abatement of nausea. The blessedly cool porcelain of the basin of his sink against his cheek. The cold tile of his bathroom under his bare feet. His bed, soft as dough.

He finds his phone on the nightstand next to a full glass of water. He chugs as he swipes away his notifications, thumbing down, down, down, until he reaches Axel’s last message. _Fine, Panic Room, then. See you soon._ Emojis: Zebra, gun. 

 _Hey,_ he says, _really sorry about last night. I owe you._

He hears the chime in the other room.

“Axel?”

No answer. Axel’s forgotten his phone.

He thinks about returning it, then decides he’ll hang on to it instead, play with it, turn it over and over in his hands, gnaw idly on one corner of it, until Axel comes knocking.

 

 

But in the living room he finds Axel reading on the sofa, his hair sticking straight up like a fan of dark gold. He’s cleared out a little space for himself, moved a stack of presents to the floor. His back is to Maxence, his shoulders relaxed and loose as he turns the page. Maxence sees the gloomy black and white cover of the book as he does. Another gift—Philippe Besson, _Arrête avec tes mensonges._  

He’s only glanced at the beginning. _One day, I can say precisely when, I know the date…_

 _I know he’s young, his youth is emanating from him, in the way he's dressed and in his casual allure. I’m dumbstruck….I don’t see his face, I can’t see it from where I’m sitting, but still I am absolutely certain I know what the face of this young man looks like….but still I call out a name._  

“Axel.”

“It’s good,” Axel says, without lifting his head. That piece of his hair, sticking up like an antenna….Maxence wants to rub it between his fingers, tug at it.  _Look at me._ “Really touching. If they adapted it for the stage, I’d leap at it.”

“Aren’t you worried about being typecast?” His voice is creaky, lower than usual. His chuckle, hoarse and nervous, sounds like the scrape of a boot on pavement. “You can, um, you can borrow it. If you want.”

“Did you have some water?” Axel says. “I left a glass by your bed. How’s your head?” 

“Ringing.”

Finally, Axel turns to him. He keeps his place in the book with a finger. He stares, really stares. _Baby blues_ , Maxence thinks. Those eyes are almost as hard to look at as the burnished sky outside. He rubs ruefully at the rough scratch of stubble on his chin. 

“Gotta shave, huh,” he mumbles. Blood throbs into his cheeks. His _skull_ aches. “Axel, about last night…” 

He squats down in the clearing at Axel’s feet. Bare feet: sunlight searing the fine golden hairs on the toes. He puts his hands on Axel’s knees and looks up.

“Sorry,” he says. “Thank you for looking after me.” 

Axel checks his page number before setting the book aside. “Of course,” he says.

“And, uh…sorry I puked on everything. Truly.”

“Your aim was quite good,” Axel says. “I’d’ve held your hair back,” he adds, miming the motion, “but, you know.” He grins. 

 _Put your hand on my head,_ Maxence thinks, watching the flutter of Axel’s fingers, the slide of his tendons under his skin, the red translucence of his fingertips in the blazing light. His throat constricts. His stomach lurches. _Touch me again. Axel, please._  

Axel’s hand wavers. Starts to descend.

 


	3. I need it ultra bright

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How many words of Maxel have I written without discussing a single nipple? In any case…voilà. Also, have a tiny bit of experimental formatting.

Maxence apologizes again as he makes them coffee.

“I don’t need any,” Axel says, watching his progress from the sofa. The bobbing steps, the slight hunch. The limp curl of his fingers. He’s moving slower than syrup. “Really, it’s fine. Sit down before you make yourself ill.”

“Have you eaten?” Maxence mumbles. He swings the fridge open—a wince crosses his face—and closes it again.

“Yes,” Axel says, deadpan, “I helped myself to a single tomato and a mouthful of snake liquor at seven this morning.”

“I am sorry, truly,” Maxence says. “You had better things to do than babysit me.”

Sometimes he wishes Maxence wouldn’t look at him, or anyone—just go through life with those eyes trained carefully on the ground. For the safety and comfort of all.

“Bah, no. Not really.”

“We could go out,” Maxence says. “For food.”

“Let’s go upstairs,” Axel says.

“What?”

“The roof,” he says. “But let’s stop at my place, before. I have croissants.”

  


First Maxence shrugs on a t-shirt from his lycée days and a pair of jeans. He slots a pair of dark glasses onto his head and a hat too, in plain subdued green. (“Don't play frisbee with this one,” Axel says. “Frisbee, what?” Maxence says, mystified.) With the close shave at his sideburns and nape, he looks like a legionnaire.

He stands at attention while Axel retrieves their breakfast, and then they climb to the roof and eat day-old croissants under the blue sky. The air is warm, the carnations in their pot blooming vermillion.

After he's nibbled both ends of a croissant and swallowed some painkillers, Maxence rolls and smokes a cigarette.  

He blows the smoke in the direction of the Eiffel Tower: away from Axel, though the breeze carries it back. Below his sunglasses, his cheeks are flushed.

“Anyway,” Maxence says, as though continuing a conversation, “it’s a nice day.”

He glances at Maxence’s croissant, abandoned on the wall, all of its flaky shell picked off, its soft white heart shining in the sun. Perhaps a crow will come for it later. A crow or a pigeon.

Another wisp of smoke drifts back on the wind. The light is glowing pink through the shell of Maxence’s ear. Axel stares at the lobe with its thin metal hoop. The skin is still a little swollen, a little puffy, redder than all the rest of him.

“Maxence,” he says.

Maxence turns his head. Above his sunglasses, his eyebrows lift in inquiry. Axel reaches over and plucks the cigarette away.

“Want some?” Maxence says. “Ax…?”

His fingers slip in the sweat at the back of Maxence’s neck. He tastes the smoke and butter on Maxence’s lips.

  


Back in his apartment, Maxence chuckles as he pulls off his t-shirt. “I shouldn’t have bothered getting dressed,” he says.

“No,” Axel agrees. He grins at Maxence, standing before him with his t-shirt tangled around his forearms and his legs long and slim and haloed, faintly, in the sunshine still pouring in through the windows. To himself, he thinks, if you had slept a bit longer, I would have come to lie beside you, waited there until your eyes flickered open and frightened you with a stupid face.

And if you weren’t looking so green around the gills, he thinks also, I would have bent you over on the roof and put my hand on you then and there. In the full light of day.

Instead, he presses Maxence gently back onto his bed, pins Maxence’s wrists with his shins, and licks and sucks and twists at Maxence’s nipples until Maxence is no longer laughing, until Maxence is red and sweating and swearing at him. 

“Fuck,” Maxence says, “enough, have mercy. Touch me already.”

The slide of his briefs is hot and damp and stiff against Axel’s tailbone. A series of little white indents surround his glistening left nipple: the marks of Axel’s teeth.

“I _am_ touching you,” Axel says. He scrapes a fingernail through the slick, across the tender pink, and watches Maxence twitch.  

“ _Fuck_ ,” Maxence whispers. He closes his eyes and pants. “I’m sorry,” he says. Axel rubs himself against Maxence’s stomach, slowly, sweetly, and Maxence groans and gulps and begins to babble. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get it up. I’m sorry I vomited. I’m sorry I drank so much. I’m sorry you had to collect my things and follow me around like a sheepdog in the middle of the night. I’m sorry you slept on the couch. I’m sorry there was nothing in the fridge. How many times do you need to hear it? I’m sorry. I am. I am. So please— _please_ —” 

The head of his prick drags over the dip of Maxence’s belly button. He sits back.

“Ask me again,” he says.

 

 

“Touch me,” Maxence gasps. “Touch me, please. Will you touch me? Please. _Please._ Touch my— _ah, fuck_.”

His fingers have gone numb with the weight of Axel kneeling on his forearms; static hums through them and they lie there, useless, as Axel feeds Maxence’s cock into the tight circle of his fist and starts to pump it.

He wishes they had put on some music: the squelch of Axel’s hand on him, of flesh on wet flesh, coupled with his own ragged breaths, is filling the room, loud and overwhelming. The ceiling spins. The light is searing his eyes, but he can’t close them. He doesn't dare.

“This is what you wanted last night, isn’t it?” Axel murmurs.

Sometimes he wishes Axel wouldn't look at him, or anyone—just go through life with that frightening gaze trained on the ground. He'd be safe, then. Unpinned and carefree.

He stares into the deep, blazing blue of Axel's eyes and shudders.

“No,” he groans. “No, no.”

“Of course it was,” Axel says, and then he shimmies down a few centimeters, grips himself alongside Maxence, and starts to jerk them both off. 

“ _Fuck_ —I—Axel—”

“You wanted me to match you, didn’t you,” Axel says. “Drink for drink. So I’d get drunk too. So I’d kiss you on your doorstep and fuck you on the floor. So we could laugh it off the next day and blame it all on the wine.”

The feeling is back in his fingers. He wraps them around Axel’s hand and squeezes.

Axel’s eyes widen. The muscles of his thighs tighten and strain, and then he lurches forward, pressing his forehead against Maxence’s shoulder. Maxence can feel Axel mouthing damply at his skin, his lips sliding against Maxence’s collarbone.

The smell of Axel’s pomade fills Maxence’s nostrils. He turns his head until his lips brush Axel’s hair and the tip of his ear.

“Fine,” he says, low. “I confess. But you’re the one who should have kissed me sooner.”  

A jolt flies through Axel’s body and into their joined hands. “Sorry,” he says, muffled. “Yeah. Sorry. I should have, I—ah, Maxence. _Maxence_.” 

Maxence tugs at him vengefully.

“And now you’re taking advantage of me anyway,” he says. “Me, an invalid.”

“Bullshit,” Axel says. He inhales sharply and exhales in a groan. “Invalid, my ass, look at you, you’re squeezing me so tight, you’re—I’m— _oh_ , I’m—oh, _fuck_ , Maxe!”

He paws at Maxence’s skull, his palm sliding over Maxence’s hair, too short to pull. He buries his face in Maxence’s neck; with a hoarse shout, he begins to orgasm, hips pummeling the clench of Maxence’s hands.  

Maxence strokes them both through the spasm with slippery fingers. He presses his mouth to Axel’s ear again, tasting salt, and babbles: _oh, what a good boy, what a good boy, oh, my darling. Fuck. Coming, I’m coming._

 

 

Axel slumps atop him in the daze of light, gasping. Eventually, he snorts.

“What?”

“Nothing. How’s your head?”

“Still attached.”

His hands are squashed between their bodies. He extricates them and traces the curve of Axel’s spine as it dips toward his ass, delicately: just the fingertips.

Axel sighs.

“Fuck, I’m tired,” he says.

Maxence watches the dappling of the sun on the wall. Somewhere in the living room, Axel’s phone is chirping and chiming. But if Axel hears it, he gives no indication. His limbs are limp as his breathing grows smoother, steadier.

“Sleep, then.” He sucks a lock of Axel’s hair into his mouth and gnaws on it.

“I don’t want to. Don’t chew on me.”

“Just for a little. I will too.”

“We’re going to get stuck together.”

He yawns. “Would that be so terrible?”

“It’s too bright, anyway.” 

“I’ll close the curtains.”

“No,” Axel says. He curls closer. His voice is soft, syrupy. “No, stay.”

 


End file.
